1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to project management and, in particular, to techniques for aligning information technology with the strategy of an enterprise.
2. Background Description
Today a lot of enterprises face the same common challenges: significant changes of market environment, pressure from competitors, changing customer requirements, regulation issues, disruptive technologies, and the like. Business practice development normally goes through the following steps: Strategic Change→Defining business requirements→Projects→Project Portfolio→Decision.
Possible changes under business transformation include: change of site (location), change of regulation (depending on geography), change of business model & customer requirements, change of business eco-system, and so forth.
In the current business environment, Enterprise Project Management (EPM) will have a positive impact on a number of concerns of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the enterprise. In particular, CIO's cite such concerns as: (1) cutting/stabilizing costs, (2) aligning information technology (IT) investments with business direction, (3) building strong IT service delivery, (4) selective outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and balancing of external service providers, (5) management of internal and external resources, (6) systems integration (e.g. Web-based systems, legacy systems, B2B systems), (7) building credibility for the value of IT's services, (8) prioritizing IT investments and formalizing the planning process, (9) security, including disaster recovery and business resumption planning, and (10) enterprise architecture.
All the changes will be realized through ongoing projects within an enterprise. The implementation of an IT project is actually realized through Project Management methodologies. Project management has always been a very important function in an organization. It has been used in various domains and industries such as aircraft design, software development, services delivery, solution development, as well as government programs. Life cycle of each project includes initialization, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and summarizing.
We summarize all these problems into the following statement: how can we integrate business requirement data, project data, project progress, resources information all into a single system so that the decision maker is able to monitor progress in real time and make decisions promptly in a managed environment with visibility control?
In fact, bridging the gap between business and IT has been a well known and challenging topic for years. By providing a standard interface description language and communication protocol, Web services has become the most promising technology to address the integration issue in different platforms or different programming environments. Therefore, it would be helpful to extend the usage of Web services technology from an IT-level computing environment to EPM for managing the enterprise project portfolio. IT can play a key role in enabling business transformation if it is aligned with the strategy of an enterprise.
Enterprise portfolio management is evolving today. It has sometimes been called “the third epoch” in the evolution of investment management procedures in public- and private-sector organizations. An enterprise involves an amalgamation of interdependent resources (including people, processes, facilities, and technologies) organized to obtain a strategic advantage in support of mission or business objectives. The decision makers in an enterprise must take the investment options and its affects associated with specific programs or projects.
META group defines EPM (enterprise program management) as “a holistic view of the coordination, oversight, and portfolio management of all programs/projects within the enterprise”. The major concerns about the EPM are “the integration of planning, strategy, resource allocation, and architecture management to achieve the best value to the enterprise”. Gartner group also call it Project Portfolio Management (PPM).
In this disclosure, Enterprise Project Management (EPM) covers both the project management aspect and the portfolio management aspect. So in the description that follows the term EPM will be used to represent Enterprise Portfolio Management as well.